BOB makes banking more cost effective:BOB CMD

Mumbai, June 5 (UNI) In a move to make its banking more cost effective, Bank of Baroda has merged its all the three zones in Gujarat and will soon merge the two zones in Uttar Pradesh.

Speaking at the Skoch Seminar here today, CMD Bank of Baroda Dr A K Khandelwal said '' In Gujarat the bank has got 700 branches and 9000 staff . one fourth of the total bank business comes from Gujarat. Similarly, in UP the bank has 650 branches and 7000 staff.

The idea is to make banking more cost effective.'' Emphasising the advantages of Core Banking Solutions (CBS), he said that it is the heart of banking system. ''In fact, CBS has changed the DNA of banking system. It has proved to be a great benefit for the banking sector as well providing arrays of facilities. Business hours have become more flexible with the adoption of CBS and banks can innovate new products and services''.

Talking about the need of technology up gradation, he pinpointed ''ten year down the line the public sector banks have lost their business in the hands of private sector banks due to lag in IT abilities and less equipped tech facilities.'' According to a research based report, the bank and financial institutions in the country are expected to invest more than USD 2 billion in IT and ITES upgradation by the end of the current year.

Investments are likely be in the areas like Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Human Resource Management (HRM), Business Intelligence and data mining kind of applications and services showing higher growth rate than the traditional core banking software.

UNI